The invention relates to a bogie for rail vehicles.
In rail vehicles the car body of the vehicle is connected via bogies with the rail wheels. The car body is pivotally supported on the bogie around a vertical axle. The rail wheels are fastened to axles which are supported on wheel bearing housings. The latter are guided relative to the bogie via longitudinal and transverse guide rods. The wheel bearing housings can be connected by an axle bridge which, via an oscillating link, is pivotally articulated on the bogie around a horizontal axle. The oscillating link takes over the steering of the axle. Thereby the axles or the wheel bearing housings can move vertically relative to the bogie and thus to the car body. For damping jerks and oscillations, springs and damping elements are situated, respectively, between the wheel bearing housing and the bogie and between the oscillating link and the bogie.
The rail wheels belonging to a bogie can be driven separately by electromotors or jointly by an electromotor via a differential gear and a corresponding connecting shaft. To this end, as a rule situated on the outer sides of the rail wheels upon lengthened wheel axles, there are spur gear drives which are mounted on separate gear housings. If the gears of two rail wheels are coupled with each other by a connecting shaft, a universal shaft joint and an axial longitudinal compensation are required to make it possible to compensate a center distance between the gears. The production and assemblage are expensive, due to the multiplicity of structural parts, and the sources of error are very numerous.
The problem on which the invention is based is to simplify the articulation of the rail wheels on the bogie and to reduce the number of parts.
According to the invention, the gear housings or housing form one unit with the wheel bearing housing and the oscillating link. Thereby a separate wheel bearing housing is eliminated and there results a rigid tie of the gear bearing housing to the oscillating link and a strong connection between the gear/bearing housings of two wheels. Even though the possibility exists that the gear/bearing housing deforms in the elastic area, said movements are so slight in the area of the connecting shaft that universal shaft joints are not needed for the power train.
Since the wheel bearing housing for the rail wheels and the gear hosing from one unit, an attachment in longitudinal direction of the vehicle to the oscillating link is possible, the wheel axle being guided by the gear/gearing housing and support therein. On one end of the wheel axle, the rail wheel is mounted and on the other end a brake disc is mounted so that the rail wheel and the brake disc with a brake caliper are situated on opposite sides of the gear/bearing housing. In advantageous manner, the oscillating link which interconnects the gear/bearing housing of two rail wheels is offset toward the bogie so as to lie outside an imaginary cylinder whose cross-section is formed by the outer limit of the rail wheels. Thereby both the part lying on the outer side of the gear/bearing housing and the one lying on the inner side are easily accessible, simple to maintain and to assemble.
Besides, the arrangement of the rail wheel and that of the brake disc with the brake caliper can be interchanged so that bogies substantially having equal parts can be made available for different track widths. It is especially convenient here that the width of the gear/bearing housing is selected so as to obtain, when assembling the rail wheels on the inner side, a narrow standard track such as of 1000 mm and when assembling the rail wheels on the outer side of the gear/bearing housing, a wide standard track of 1435 mm. Since the track widths are widely distributed on the market, such configuration can cover the greatest number of requirements demanded from bogies.
In development of the invention, it is proposed that the gear is designed as a spur gear drive with a gear wheel on the wheel axle, an intermediate wheel and an input pinion. Thereby a center distance between the axle and the connecting shaft can be arranged so that the connecting shaft can be passed through the hollow oscillating link and thus is protected against environmental influences and damages.